Restaurants Faced a Choice:Adapt or Die

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Like many restaurateurs who focus on fresh pasta,Alida Solomon found that long strands of fresh,delicate noodles quickly congealed into clumps within delivery containers.It was clear that she needed to do more than transition her menu to off-premise sales by shovelling tagliatelle into the back seat of an Uber.

与许多主推新鲜的意大利面食的餐馆老板一样，阿莉达·所罗门也发现，刚刚煮好的可口长面条放入外卖餐盒会马上变坨。显然，要想把店内菜品转型成外卖，她不能简单地把扁面条塞到优步送餐车的后座了事。

2 So,last year,the chef and owner of Tutti Matti in Toronto invested in an extruding machine to produce sturdier pastas such as canestri,rigatoni,bucatini and conchiglie.She also converted the dining area near the window into a retail space dominated by a standup display freezer for gelato; the tables were devoted to farmers’ market produce and baked goods.“The market makes me happy,” she says.“Because I get to share my obsession with seasonal vegetables.”

2 因此，身为多伦多图蒂·马蒂餐厅主厨和老板的她在2020年买了台压面机，用于制作更耐放的意大利面（比如蜗牛壳面、短管空心面、吸管面、贝壳面）。她还把靠窗的用餐区改造成了零售区，那里放着立式冰柜，展示意大利冰淇淋，桌上摆满来自农贸市场的农产品和烘焙食品。“我喜欢农贸市场。”她说，“因为我和那里的人一样极爱时令蔬菜。”

3 When COVID-19 forced restaurant owners around the world to suspend dine-in service,they had a choice: adapt or die.So they threw every idea at the wall: meal kits,frozen foods,wine from their curated lists (in jurisdictions that relaxed alcohol laws),virtual cooking classes and subscriptions for ice cream or pizza.Even Earls,a national restaurant chain,started selling groceries.

3 受新冠疫情影响，世界各地的餐饮业主只好暂停堂食，他们要做出选择：适应变化，还是关门大吉。因此，他们想尽办法做出种种尝试：预制料理包、速冻食品、精选酒单（仅限放宽限酒令的辖区）、虚拟烹饪课程，还有冰淇淋和比萨饼的订购服务。就连加拿大全国连锁的厄尔斯餐厅都卖起了食品杂货。

4 Most restaurateurs emphasized that packing their cuisine into plastic cylinders was not what they got into business for,and they couldn’t wait to provide a dining experience again.Now that they are able to do so,which of the past year’s necessary adaptations will they retain and what will be jettisoned?

4 大多数餐饮业主都强调一点，他们开餐厅的目的不是把美食装到塑料桶里，因此，大家热切期盼再度为食客提供用餐体验。既然现在餐厅开放了，在过去一年的必要调整中，有哪些做法会被保留，又有哪些会被抛弃呢？

5 In Montreal,Emma Cardarelli couldn’t wait to get rid of takeout and delivery at her restaurant Nora Gray.She did as soon as patio service resumed.“The experience we give,the level of service and the quality of food:this is something that only translates in the dining room,” says Cardarelli.“That’s our brand and how we made our reputation.”

5 埃玛·卡尔达雷利在蒙特利尔经营一家名为诺拉·格雷的餐厅，她同样急于摆脱外卖和送餐服务。露天用餐一经恢复，她就立刻停掉了外送业务。“只有在餐厅里，才能为客人提供优质的用餐体验、高水平的服务和高质量的餐品。”卡尔达雷利说，“这是餐厅的品牌，我们是这样做出口碑的。”

6 While meal kits (such as whole roasted sea bream with black rice alla puttanesca,garlic brown butter and caper sauce)were a big part of Nora Gray’s survival over the past year,their production took up too much of the kitchen,and the staff’s time,to co-exist with restaurant service.

6 尽管诺拉·格雷餐厅在2020年主要靠销售预制料理包（比如整烤鲷鱼配多味意大利酱汁拌黑米、蒜味褐色黄油和刺山柑酱）维系生意，但制作料理包不但占用过多厨房空间，还耗掉员工大量时间，因此与堂食无法共存。

7 Cardarelli’s other restaurant,the more casual Elena,however,is continuing not just with takeout and delivery,but with a basement café transformed into a retail area with jars of tomato sauce,hot chili oil,honey,Caesar dressing and frozen pizzas.Some of Elena’s products are available through Brunette,a website that distributes sauces,oils,T-shirts and other merch from independent restaurants,mostly based in Montreal,New York and Toronto.

7 不过，在卡尔达雷利开的另一家名为埃莱娜的餐厅里，用餐氛围更为随意，那里不仅继续提供外卖和送餐服务，还把地下用餐区改造成零售区，摆放罐装的番茄酱、辣椒油、蜂蜜、凯撒酱和冷冻披萨。埃莱娜餐厅的部分零售产品还放到布鲁内特网站销售。该网站销售的酱料、食用油、T 恤衫等商品，都由独立经营的餐厅供货，这类餐厅大多位于蒙特利尔、纽约和多伦多。

8 Ideally,a restaurant could grow its retail revenue stream beyond niche distribution to land their sauces on supermarket shelves.But scaling up production requires outsourcing.The arrangement,in which a third party mass-produces a customized version of your food and then adds your business label (for example,everything on the shelves at Trader Joe’s),is known as co-packing.The manufacturing side of food can be lucrative.But restaurants face challenges—testing recipes with the co-packer,haggling over the source of ingredients to keep costs down—to maintain quality.

8 对餐厅来说，理想的情况是在专营市场销售之外打开零售收益渠道，让自家的酱料登上超市的货架。但是，扩大生产规模要通过外包来实现，由第三方批量生产餐厅定制的食品，再贴上餐厅的标签（比如乔氏超市的所有产品），这种模式称为代工生产。食品的生产方可能获得丰厚利润，但对餐厅来说，难点在于质量保障，不但要与合作企业一同测试食谱，还要为了降低成本在原料源头方面讨价还价。

9 “Restaurants are small businesses.Inherently,they’re not very strategic,”says Bruce McAdams,hospitality professor at the University of Guelph.“I think most [of them] are going to drift back to their core business.”

9 “经营餐厅是小本生意，从根本上讲，它们不太具备战略优势。”加拿大圭尔夫大学酒店管理系的教授布鲁斯·麦克亚当斯说，“我认为大多数（餐厅）会回归到它们的核心业务。”

10 But McAdams does see some features of that business shifting.“One of the things diners may have been lulled intoaccepting is smaller menus,” he says.In fact,that’s been happening over the past few years as restaurants have grappled with higher wages and a kitchen labour shortage that was a problem long before the pandemic.

10 但是，麦克亚当斯确实发现，餐饮业的某些特点在发生变化。“菜品缩水是变化之一，顾客可能毫无察觉地接受了。”他说。事实上，这种趋势在前几年一直存在，远在疫情爆发之前，餐饮业主就在努力解决工资增长和厨房人手短缺的问题。

11 Many restaurateurs also say a small victory in the last year has been the willingness of diners to adapt to digital ordering,not just for pickup and delivery,but within the restaurant.Vince Sgabellone,Canadian food-service analyst with the NPD Group,a market research firm,believes this,too,will survive the pandemic.“Which is wonderful on a number of levels for the restaurateur and the consumer.”

11 许多餐饮业主还表示，2020年一个小小的进步就是网上点餐的推广，不只是外卖和送餐，堂食的客人也愿意网上点菜。市场调查公司NPD集团的加拿大餐饮服务分析师温切·斯加贝洛内认为，疫情结束后，人们还是会在网上点餐。“对餐馆老板和消费者而言，这种模式优点多多。”

12 No one likes waiting to order when they’re hungry or for the bill when they’re done.Ordering and paying through a tablet or phone streamlines the dining experience for the customer.Restaurants can also operate with fewer staff—an essential need in this labour market.

12 没有人愿意在饥肠辘辘的时候排队点餐，也没有人喜欢餐后等姗姗来迟的账单。通过平板电脑或手机点餐结账，简化了流程，提高了用餐体验。餐厅也得以解决人手不足的问题——在餐饮业劳动力市场，人手必不可少。

13 Those who plan on continuing their businesses as some amalgam of restaurant and general store are doing it not merely because they have enough capacity to devote space to sales that happen outside peak dining hours,but because the practice has forged a deeper connection with the community.For some,being a place to buy bread on a day when hour-long queues snaked around the supermarket block made their business more integral to their neighbourhoods and more personal in the lives of their customers.

13 打算继续兼营餐厅和杂货的业主，自有其理由。他们不仅有能力调配餐厅空间，保证用餐高峰时段以外的零售业务，而且他们已经通过这种方式，与社区人群建立了更深层次的联系。对一些餐饮业主来说，人们不用在街区的超市门口排队一小时，在他们店里就能买到面包，这样他们的生意对社区来说会更加不可或缺，与顾客的生活也更密切。

14 Solomon,for example,sees less money from retailing than dining.But she plans to stick with the hybrid.“This is now a part of who we are,” she says.■

14 拿所罗门的餐厅来说，尽管零售收入比不上餐饮收入，她仍然决定要兼顾两头。她说：“混合模式现在已经成为我们品牌的一部分了。” □